Photo of Nancy Noga, a 17-year-old Sayreville girl who was killed in 1999 as she was walking home from her part-time job

SAYREVILLE — For Janice Whitt, the holidays have become a stark reminder.

Right around Christmas each year, Whitt calls from her home in North Carolina to police in Sayreville and asks if they are any closer to finding the person who killed her sister 12 years ago.

"The holidays always make you think of family, and people you can’t be with," said Whitt.

On Jan. 7, 1999, 17-year-old Nancy Noga left her part-time job at a store in Old Bridge Township to make the 15-minute walk to her home in the Skytop Gardens apartments in Sayreville. She never arrived home.

Her father called police. Officers scoured the area without success. It wasn’t until Jan. 12 that a man walking his dog found Noga’s body in a ravine behind a mini mall, on the opposite side of wide, bustling Ernston Road from the apartments.

By then the body, still dressed in a purple "Arizona" jacket, flared jeans, dark V-neck sweater, black and white platform sneakers, had been covered by 5 inches of snow. Her purple backpack still hung from her shoulder.

"Snow especially makes me think of her," Whitt said during a telephone conversation this week from her home in Stokesdale, N.C.

It was two days before the frozen remains thawed for an autopsy that determined the girl died from a blow to the head. She had not been raped or robbed.

In the following weeks, police conducted 500 interviews. As the years passed, officers changed positions, or retired, and the case was assigned to younger investigators who continued to search for answers.

"I would not refer to it as a "cold case,' " said Sayreville police Lt. Timothy Brennan.

Detectives followed many leads and have repeatedly re-interviewed witnesses.

"It’s always been ongoing. There’s always something being done," said Sgt. Thomas Cassidy, who now heads the investigation. He and other detectives were back at the ravine last week.

Janice and Nancy’s parents separated when the girls were young, with the girls first going with their mother. A rebellious Nancy later went to live with her father in Sayreville. But the sisters stayed in touch.

Whitt last saw her sister months before the killing, coming up to Sayreville to visit.

Whitt, then 19, recalls "practically pleading" with her father to allow a visit. Even while Whitt was in New Jersey, Noga kept working at two part-time jobs.

"That kid worked constantly," Whitt recalled.

Noga had enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and was to start basic training after her senior year at Sayreville War Memorial High School.

Shortly after 6 p.m. Jan. 7, she left the Rag Shop in the Kmart mall on Route 9 in Old Bridge for the less-than-a-mile walk home.

At 7 p.m., 30 minutes after Noga was to be home, her father, Mark Noga, started looking for her. At 8:52 p.m., he called police and officers began the unsuccessful search.

Whitt makes her annual calls to keep her sister’s memory alive.

"I just want to let them know that somebody cared for her, and still does. I wish I could do a little bit more," said Whitt, who is now married with two children. Her husband, she said, was an only child, and Noga was Whitt’s only sibling.